


The Reunion

by NorroenDyrd



Series: Should Never Have Existed [10]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Abominations (Dragon Age), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Awkward Crush, Delirium, Dorian is a Good Friend, F/M, Family Reunions, Father-Son Relationship, Flashbacks, Gen, Non-Canon Inquisitor (Dragon Age), Sweet, The Blight (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-04-27 09:26:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14422440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd
Summary: While doing his master's will, Magister Alexius has managed to prevent Herald Trevelyan's emergence at the Conclave - but in a way Corypheus is not going to approve of. Trevelyan is still alive and well, while Alexius carries her mark, forced to live out the story of the Inquisition from the very beginning in the shoes of the 'chosen of Andraste'. Which means that Felix, who at this point in time was still in Tevinter, has been left alone. He is not entirely helpless, though: with Dorian's help, he has followed the recently formed Venatori cult all the way south (fearing that his father may have been kidnapped), and even helped repel their attack on Redcliffe. Now he is among those sent from Redcliffe back to Haven, to warn the rest of the Inquisition that a Venatori siege is pending - and apart from his fear for his father's life (for the Herald, of course, is Corypheus' main target), Felix also has his disease to deal with.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The story makes more sense if you take at least a cursory glance at the other works in the series.

The song is too much, too much, too much. It roars and raves, pounding at his temples from within, in a frenzied, trance-like dance - and the dance consumes him, his head bobbing in tune, his body dissolving in the feverish melody, all flesh peeling off layer by layer till he imagines himself as a bared carcass, glinting and sticky with blood and the last few clinging patches of soggy flesh. Like Mother's body on the sand after the hyenas descended, too overcome by hunger, too desperate to survive in the sweltering flatlands of the Anderfels, to heed the self-preservation instinct that may have warned then that a corpse touched by darkspawn is probably not the healthiest meal.  
  
Wait... Wait... Why is he thinking all of this? Why is he imagining this... gorey nonsense?  
  
He is not a carcass, he is still whole (well, as while as he can be, for a man doomed to die), still the same Felix. And there is no oven-hot orange sand, no carpet of heavy, dragging hurlock footprints. He is riding on horseback through the utterly undesertlike wilderness of Ferelden, accompanying Dorian and their new... dare he say it... friends from the Inquisition on a very important mission.  
  
It takes Felix colossal effort to shake the fever off, to reassemble himself back from the floating bits (not that there were any floating bits in the physical realm to begin with!), to stop the song from devouring his brain down to the last little grey crumb. But time and again, he pulls it off. Time and again, he emerges from the hot, stifling haze into fresh air - and his bleary eyes make out the rhythmic rush of the trees on either side of his horse's slender, long-maned neck, and the fuzzy golden spot that is that Antivan woman... Ambassador of the Inquisition... The head of the expedition that was sent to Redcliffe, while the bulk of the southern demon-slayers' forces was rounding up the rogue Templars - only to get swarmed by the Venatori cultists.  
  
That's... That's why they are making this journey now. That's what this whole mission is all about; that's the reason for its utmost, urgent importance.   
  
The Venatori - those dangerous, unstable Imperium supremacists that Felix and Dorian have been tracking all the way from home - have not just sent off a small fringe group to try and enslave the rebel mages headquartered in Redcliffe (who have been rescued from this lamentable fate, and are soon to follow after the horseback team, as reinforcements). The cult's grand plan, according to the orders the Inquisition has intercepted, is to assault Haven, and - at the cost of countless innocent lives if need be - eliminate the Herald of Andraste. His... His father.  
  
Somehow, by some insane spellcraft (something to do with Project Time Travel perhaps? Who knows? Who cares?), Felix's father has, completely without warning, transported himself all the way south, landing in the middle of the Conclave explosion and meeting a mysterious spectral woman, who may or may not have been Andraste herself.   
  
According to the  heavily scarred, boisterous young mage that hastily filled Felix and Dorian in, that woman has blessed the confused, disoriented, and more than a little grumpy Vint with a unique gift - the ability to mend the bleeding Veil and banish the invading demons. And for that, the Venatori want him dead. The most terrible among the nightmares Felix has been having ever since his father vanished into nothingness - the vision of him being dragged away to his death by faceless shades in dark robes - is threatening to come true.  
  
And when Felix is so close to finding his father, too! So very close! After all this staggering with a burning wound in his heart - which had opened the instant Felix turned his head and his father was not there. After all this thrashing in the claws of crippling fear; after all this cowering under the onslaught of haunting questions: 'Where is he? What sort of magic has taken him away? Is it those cultists that have crawled out of the woodwork? Have they hurt him?'. After all this searching and calling and hoping against all hope.  
  
A long-expected reunion is just barely within his reach - but if he does not hurry, it may well be his father's corpse that he will hold in his arms when he reaches Haven. And he cannot allow that to happen! He is his parents' son, damn it all! Half Alexius, half Arida - and both halves have always fought tooth and claw to protect the people they love.  
  
If Felix were feeling better, he would have, perhaps, appreciated the irony: he is now using the same reasoning he once chided his father for, as the latter drove himself mad with insomnia and mental exhaustion, throwing all of himself into the search for a Blight cure. But, as it happens, Felix has scarcely enough wits to scrape together for processing his surroundings, and not slipping back into delirium. It is already quite a challenge to figure out that he is travelling on horseback, stuck awkwardly into the saddle like some sort of ragdoll; while behind his back, supporting him and keeping him from falling, sits that rugged southerner that bumped into Felix and Dorian at the gates Redcliffe, on his way back from a... hunting trip was it?   
  
The man - Arl Teagan's 'sort of nephew', by his own description - is named Alistair; apparently, he has recently returned from a manner of... exile? And before that exile, he used to be a Grey Warden. Which makes it quite understandable that he would become so fascinated with Felix - a (and he quotes him again) 'Wow, an actual, flesh and blood person that has been living with the Blight for so long!'.   
  
It is not... the most pleasant of experiences, being scanned with unblinking, rounded eyes as though he were an outlandish curio; but then again, Felix probably has no moral right to complain, as so many of his family's social peers would have done the same when browsing a selection of 'rare slave imports'. Or 'augmented items' like that poor elf with lyrium tattoos, wearing nothing but a pair of short tight-fitting breeches to show off as much of his etched skin as possible. Taciturn and obedient as if he were powered by clockwork, he served wine at one of Magister Danarius' parties that Felix once tagged along to as moral support for Dorian as they both, uh, monitored the latter's crush, Rilienus, who was among the guests (the monitoring was mostly done by hiding behind sofas and ornamental plants and such).   
  
Dorian, still almost a child back then, pink-eared and huge-eyed, with all his usual confidence getting shattered whenever a pretty boy looked in his general direction, never did pluck up the courage to approach Rilienus, for fear of being spurned with disgust (just as he had feared Felix would stop being his friend when he learned that he 'did not... like girls the way normal people are supposed to do'). But he has often told Felix that he still looks back on the party with satisfaction - for the master of the house is now dead, at the hand of the very slave he had once subjected to that agonizing 'augmentation ritual'.  
  
Oh, great. He has drifted off away from the road to Haven again. At least now, his mind has been claimed by vivid reminiscences rather than the sickening whirlpool of nightmares. Back to... Back to Alistair, then. Felix really does not begrudge the Warden for gawking at him, uneasy as it has made him. Especially since at one point, Alistair did notice how intrusive he was being, and, with a spluttering apologetic cough, drew back a little... But then, their heroic quartet discovered that out of the horses that had survived the maelstrom of magic unleashed by the Venatori in the Redcliffe castle, only two were sturdy enough to race all the way to Haven. Meaning that they had to split in twos and each share a mount with someone else.   
  
Upon realizing that he might potentially be riding the same horse with Ambassador Josephine, Alistair (who, whenever Felix's condition allows him to be observant, appears to fawn over her the same way as Dorian fawned over Rilienus) little short of shoved her into Dorian's arms, his careworn, barely shaven face resembling a fresh beetroot, deep-purple and with fuzzy roots on the lower end.  
  
'Oh look!' he exclaimed, with a weak, forced laugh. 'Our friend from Tevinter would like to ride with you, right?'  
  
Dorian cocked an eyebrow with a small huff: Felix does not know all the details, nor does he think it worthy of him to pry, but he knows that the last time a woman was forcibly thrust into his friend's arms, it ended in disaster.   
  
Alistair's expression, however, was so flustered and helpless that Dorian's chagrin promptly gave way to mild amusement.  
  
'Very well,' he conceded, 'I shall keep the lady entertained with my illustrious company - if you put those big boorish arms of yours to use and don't let Felix slip off the saddle'.  
  
Back when he said that, Felix feigned a look of outrage, flailing his limbs and giving Dorian a very meaningful 'Hey!'. But truth be told, if it were not for Alistair, who is making up for all his blunders by holding him as tightly as he can, he would have thudded down into the dust long ago, and would not even have noticed it, too dazed by the whirlwind of visions. There is only one... small thing that Felix, again, does not feel justified to complain about.  
  
It is more than obvious to him that Alistair also carries the Blight in his veins - perhaps as part of being a Warden - and, within such proximity, this tainted essence resonates with Felix's own infection. Two streams of black tar, frothing and bubbling with a yearning to blend; two incomprehensible songs, forming a ghostly chorus that speeds up to a wild drum beat that inevitably overcomes Felix again a certain while after he thinks he has gotten a grip on himself and snapped back to reality.   
  
Alistair must be feeling it too, he tells himself fiercely, even as the image of the rustic country road cracks into molten green shards, and the orange, blood-splattered Anderfels sand comes trickling in, filling up the gaps between those shards no matter how hard Felix blinks. Alistair must also be dealing with a double dose of the Blight - and he is still sane!  
  
He is trying to stay sane too, to remind himself where he is... But this joined song - it is too much. Too much. Too much.


	2. Chapter 2

Another lapse of delirum passes; another coarse, suffocating stream of sand floods Felix's field of view. This time he envisions himself and his mother - who is bleeding so much from the wounds inflicted upon her by darkspawn that she appears to be bathing from head to toe under an unending crimson waterfall - trapped in a gigantic hourglass, with the rough, sharp reddish-orange grains powdering their shoulders, crackling on their teeth, and building up into hard, tight shackles around their ankles, then calves, then knees.  
  
On the other side of the glass, Felix sees his father, horror-struck, screaming inaudibly and swallowing tears as he hammers against the deceptively transparent but diamond-hard surface, scrambling in vain to get them both out.  
  
First, he assaults their sand-filled prison with his spells, which splash at the hourglass, like spurts of luminescent green-tinted water, and drip off into nothing without leaving so much as a tiny scratch; then, with his hands. Tapping, clawing, hitting the unrelenting glass with a tight, white-knuckled fist, while the sand within builds its wall higher and higher. It closes in like the shifting panels of a trapped chamber in some magister's elaborately defended treasury, living no space to breathe, to swallow, or even blink.  
  
The last thing that Felix sees before he gets fully swallowed by the dense orange wave, vanishing into the sand's depths like a lifeless fossil, is the blazing green flash behind his father's back. A Rift has just opened up, drawing him into its yawning abyss, where clots of venom squelch and hiss, and clammy, bony demonic hands reach up, greedy for prey.  
  
'He will make it,' Felix tells himself - his final conscious thought as the myriads of prickling grains pour down his throat and lungs and clog up underneath his lids, scraping his eyeballs raw.  
  
'He can close Rifts now. He will make it'.  
  
The next thing he knows, his field of view is obscured by a pulsing, screamingly vibrant square of green. The green then turns to red, and red to black - and suddenly, Felix does not feel stifled any more. He does not feel anything. No pain, no fear, no desperate thirst for air. Nothing but... The trace of warm drool across his cheek?  
  
Groaning faintly, Felix shakes the blackness out of his head with a weak toss from left to right - and looks up with heavy-lidded, burning eyes, to find that he is no longer in his saddle.  
  
He is lying on the ground, with his back propped up against something vaguely uncomfortable, textured like... the gnarled trunk of a tree, he thinks. His medicinal satchel, stuffed with all manner of potions and powders and research notes that he picked up from his father's study before leaving Tevinter, is resting on the ground next to him, spread wide open - though it will not stay so for long, as Dorian is busy packing some clanking half-empty bottles into it and lacing it shut. He must have... He must have given Felix a remedy for his sickness, and he does not even remember it!  
  
But this means... This means that they have had to stop for Felix's sake! His stupid fainting fit has cost them precious time! They can't afford to dawdle like this! If he has become a burden, perhaps he can be left behind? But on the other hand, he has to make sure that his father is out of danger! To help save him, and the people of Haven, if need be! He...  
  
Ah, whom is he trying to trick? He is about as useful to have around as an empty potato sack. He should never have started whining to be included on this mission. Should have just remained in Redcliffe, where the Inquisition's new ally, Grand Enchanter Fiona, together with that Qunari mercenary who knows surprisingly much about military ciphers for a simple mercenary, is regrouping any battle-ready mages in her care for a march to stop the Venatori; whereas that lovely mage from a Southern Circle, Lady Bethany Hawke, is tending to the children, the elderly, and the wounded.  
  
She offered him to stay in her care - and was so considerate about it too!  
  
'I understand the anguish of wanting to... to save your parent from a monster,' she soothed him softly, taking his hand just as she had done in battle, when Felix had come face to face with a Venatori cultist and almost gave in to fear.  
  
'But you... you are not well enough for that. Maybe you should let Mistress Josephine, Ser Alistair, and your friend ride to Haven without you? You can join us instead, when we all set out. I am sure you will recover a bit by then. I will see to it myself!'.  
  
He refused, of course, with his mind obstinately set on not waiting around any longer. Or, well, he tried to refuse.   
  
The thing about Lady Hawke is... She has such a beautiful, gentle voice, and so much light radiating from her warm brown eyes - like there are tiny droplets of sunshine caught in her irises. It is all somewhat overwhelming - and when she addressed him, Felix was so affected by her... sunshineness, that he lost control over all those carefully picked words he had been planning to use for politely declining her offer.   
  
Somewhere along the way from his mind to his mouth, the words had gotten scattered and mixed up. And instead of something more or less acceptable, along the lines of 'Oh no, you have better things to do than waste your valuable time playing nurse to me. I had best head off to Haven without dallying!', he croaked out an incomprehensible,  
  
'I... I am waste of nurse... You are... valuable... I mean... Your time... dallying... I will... play in Haven... I... I should go!'  
  
If he were... whole, he could have compared himself to a young and giddy Dorian spying on Rilienus from behind a potted palm, or to a thunderstruck Alistair panicking whenever he shares the same cubic metre of air with Josephine. But, for the nth time - he has no moral ground to do so.   
  
He cannot afford to develop... feelings towards anyone, man or woman or otherwise. He belongs to the Blight now, to its dark song - and not even the way a Grey Warden does. He is a walking corpse living on borrowed time; prolonging his existence only for as much as it will take to save the one who would have given anything to save him. And apparently turning into more and more of a burden in the process.  
  
'Dorian...' he mumbles thickly, arching his eyebrows and trying to catch his friend's hand. 'Thank... you... Did you... Lose much time... Because of me?'  
  
Dorian rolls up his eyes, and then turns away from Felix - maybe to hide the twitch that pulls the corners of his mouth downward.  
  
'Please no martyr-like languishing here,' he says. 'That is reserved only for my own self when I have to eat the bland southern food. We would have had to stop either way to give the horses a rest'.  
  
'And Cara here started barking and nipping at the horses' ankles until we slowed down and got you off to get healed,' Alistair adds, leaning into the frame together with the culprit behind the drool that Felix still feels on his skin. A large, squat she-hound with a drooping, smiling mouth, whose beady eyes examine Felix's features with an expression of profound concern that one barely sees in a lot of humans, let alone animals.   
  
She took quite a liking to him in Redcliffe for whatever reason, and, her keen sense of smell having alerted her to the presence of taint in Felix's blood, has taken it upon herself to follow him about like a diligent nanny and remind him to take his powders with a series of insistent whines. It is going to be... amusing, trying to explain her presence to Father. If he ever catches him alive.  
  
'She... is quite a character, isn't she?' Felix murmurs, breathing in and gradually pulling himself up, with the tree trunk as a support. His head spins, and a lump lurches nauseatingly in his throat - but the effect only lasts for a couple of seconds (Dorian has really worked wonders with Father's supplies - for which Felix intends to give him far more appropriate gratitude than 'Uhh... Thank you' once their mission is complete).  
  
Soon enough, he is able to make a tentative step forward on his own, and Cara trots up to him eagerly, wagging her entire hind quarters in approval.  
  
She really shouldn't have raised such a fuss on Felix's account - but she has been doing her best, and one look at her awakens a compulsion to part his lips and attempt a smile.  
  
'I believe the proper Fereldan term is "good girl", yes?' Josephine suggests helpfully.  
  
The sound of her voice makes Alistair's ever so slightly pointy ears swell up with the richest shade of pink - and when Felix looks over them both, his gaze chances to slip past their heads, and fixate on the evening sky. Very visibly evening sky - velvety blue, with fine silvery needlepoint of stars across the centre, a few of the constellations clearly recognizable... Which Felix has not encountered since the start of his and Dorian's journey south. Usually, nightfall would bring about flares of acidic green, the Breach bleeding its unearthly light even stronger than during the day. Now all that remains of it is a hair-thin scar, like a wobbly parabolic graph that has been traced in green ink - and so lightly that it has taken Felix around half a minute to spot it and deduce what it is.  
  
'Ah, yes, you've noticed,' Dorian remarks, coming up to him and throwing his head back to study the sky. 'Just as you blacked out, the Breach put on a little green firework display, and then shrank to... this'.  
  
'Which means that he did it,' Josephine smiles, echoing Felix's delirium almost word for word (perhaps that green flash he saw in his hallucinations was actually the Breach closing).  
  
'The Herald... Your father did it. And you will see him soon. We are almost there'.


	3. Chapter 3

After his embarrassing blackout that coincided with the sealing of the Breach, Felix has stopped pushing himself to the limit and suffering in silence without his powders, for the sake of 'saving time'. He is still struggling with those sharp, tear-jerking pangs in his chest, which pierce his heart whenever he ponders over how much of a burden he is, and how foolish it was of him to blunder out into the great wide open with grand ideas about 'saving his father'. But he has already travelled too far to turn back to Redcliffe, and his kind companions - whose attention he probably does not deserve - would have kept stopping to force-feed him the Blight remedy either way.  
  
So, instead of pretending that everything is fine and clinging onto his mount's mane until delirium wipes his mind blank, he has taken to keeping a close watch over Cara the mabari, who is ambling at a steady pace by his side. At the slightest sign of her getting agitated, he turns back to his companion (this time around, it's Josephine, as Alistair still refuses to share a horse with her, too flustered and tomato-like to function) and, clearing his throat unobtrusively, calls out,  
  
'Umm... Do you think we can slow down... So I can use my satchel?'  
  
Upon getting a very zestful, encouraging permission ('Why of course! Whatever you need, milord - and please, please, do not be so apologetic! We are making good time; you are not stalling us!'), he rummages through his supplies and measures out a proper dose of the mixture designed by his father, gulping it down with the familiar sensation of stuffing his mouth and throat with brick dust. As soon as he stops spluttering and making what must be ridiculously distorted grimaces, their little team continues its journey... Which, towards the end, he even begins to enjoy.  
  
The dread for his father's fate as the target of the Venatori is still there, lapping at the bottom of his stomach like icy thaw water, of the kind you see flowing along the roadside in spring to the south of Tevinter. With chunks of hardened snow crust still floating in it, sharp enough to make a bleeding cut. But cut at with these snow shards as he is, Felix is now far less groggy than at the beginning of the ride.  
  
His vision clear, his mind alert, his limbs feeling like flesh and sinew rather than shapeless wads of cotton wool, he finds himself capable of appreciating the countryside sights beyond just the road underneath his horse's hooves, and enjoying the taste of modest rations that Josephine thoughtfully packed for them - and also, of paying attention to the conversation that flows between them as they break bread.   
  
Apparently, as a starving orphan many years ago, Alistair would spend nights on end clutching his stomach and yearning for a taste of fine cheese - a rare treat introduced to the household by his caregiver's Orlesian wife.  
  
'Sometimes, if I was good enough at keeping out of the Arlessa's way and not annoying her,' he begins reminiscing without warning, gazing vacantly at the slice of rye and cheese in his large scabby hands, 'The Arl would make sure that I got away with stealing leftovers. Nabbing a morsel of that fancy, smelly, weird-coloured would be the best thing that happened to me all week...'  
  
He cuts himself short, his eyes widening with a look of sheer dread, and hides his face from a startled Josephine.  
  
'I... I have blabbed too much,' he squawks, embarrassment giving an odd pitch to his voice. 'All this time on my own has made me forget how to talk to people. Not that I was any good at that in the... the first place'.  
  
'Oh goodness!' Josephine gasps, her hand on her chest. 'You were so terribly mistreated! There is no shame in being frank about it! And as for cheese... That is an exquisite food indeed; and my contacts in Orlais will be more than happy to supply you with a full platter of most delicious samples!'  
  
'Make sure that it has little slices of fruit, too, to highlight the taste,' Felix hears himself say on an impulse - spurred on by the surge of memories of his time in Orlais.  
  
Upon hearing him pipe in with something that is not a groan of pain or a snatch of slurred feverish nonsense, Dorian perks up, his expression brightening, and says with a chuckle,  
  
'Oh, Felix... Remember that story you told your father an I? About how you wandered into a shop in Orlais dedicated entirely to cheese, and got lost?'  
  
Felix is more than keen to share that amusing anecdote again - anything to take his mind off worrying about what they might find in Haven - which brings a smile even to Alistair's usually downcast face. The four of them go on talking about cheese even as they mount their horses again, and race past glittering, sugar-like rows of snowdrifts, which they have been encountering more and more often with the change of the terrain, and ascend up the final stretch of the icy highlands towards the gates of Haven.  
  
As the golden lights in the windows of the village's homely cottages begin their welcoming, winking dance in the murk before then, Alistair squints ahead, a reflective glow shimmering in his eyes, and raises an eyebrow.  
  
'Whoah... The last time I was here, this place was full of a creepy sort of... bleakness that made my skin crawl. Also, it was chock-full of those gloomy fellows who thought Andraste was a dragon. Your Inquisition has really spruced things up!'  
  
He, of course, does not just mean the brightly lit windows. There are echoes of music in the air - a simple, bouncy melody played on some manner of string instrument - and Felix catches a rather appetizing whiff of roasted meat.  
  
'They are still celebrating the victory over the Breach,' Josephine guesses, growing terse as a bow string behind Felix's back. 'Why are they still celebrating?! Did the raven lose its way? But... But Leli's - Leliana's - ravens never do that!'  
  
Ah, yes. The raven. Felix remembers it quite well.  
  
As the four riders hit the mountain path, they began spotting large black birds with crooked barbed beaks and piercing eyes, perched on the rocks and tree branches and tilting their heads to track their progress. Many of them moved in line with the procession, lifting off their makeshift roosts with a heavy flap of their dark wings and a shrill, questioning 'Caw? Caw?', and then settling down again a few paces further up the path - something that seemed to annoy Cara the mabari, who snarled and pressed back her ears whenever they did that.  
  
'Those are Stabbity's spies, right?' Alistair asked Josephine, much less shy after the cheese talk. 'Leliana's, I mean. She likes sending them to keep an eye on people, doesn't she?'  
  
There was a tremour in his voice, and even though he said nothing else, Josephine quickly guessed that the birds made him uneasy.  
  
'The ravens are certainly rather unnerving,' she conceded softly, 'But Leliana has trained them well, and... And oh, I think we can send one ahead to announce our arrival! It's a pity we didn't encounter them sooner... provably because we took a shortcut through the wilds... But we can still use their aid!'  
  
After saying that, she caught the gaze of the nearest crow and, peeking out from behind Felix, waved her hand at it tentatively, as though greeting a human being.  
  
'Hello there?' she began (turning back to look at her, Felix saw that she had put on a diplomatic smile). 'You know me, I trust? I bring news for the Spymaster! Could you kindly pass along a message?'  
  
Oddly enough, the raven understood the question - and, leaving the snow-coated fir branch it had been swinging on (with quite a shower of large, soft white blobs crumbling off to the ground in its wake), landing on Felix's arm, which he had been quick enough to stretch out.  
  
While the raven waited, gripping him a bit painfully with its skinny, long-clawed feet, Josareine took out the writing clipboard she had also taken with her, and scribbled together a letter, brief and to the point,  
  
 _'Leliana,_  
  
 _The mages have allied with us, and shall be along shortly. However, the Venatori cultists are planning a large-scale assault on Haven, with the Herald as their target. Please start evacuating the civilians to safety (the Chantry?), and discussing defense plans with Cullen. I will explain more when I get there._  
  
 _Josephine'._  
  
When she was finished, she rolled the letter up and tied it to the crow's foot with a stray ribbon she had found among her belongings. The feathered messenger observed the whole process, pecking Josephine's hand if it thought she was not attaching the paper securely enough.  
  
Only when completely satisfied, did the bird fly away to its destination. And it really should have gotten to Haven by now, shouldn't it? Something must have gone wrong...  
  
'Hatred caught the raven,' a most peculiar, singsong voice says suddenly, while the blue nocturnal pall slides apart, and a lone figure emerges at side of the snowy path, so abruptly that Alistair and Dorian's horse lurches aside in fear, breathing heavily and rolling back its eyes to reveal bulging, bloodshot whites.  
  
Dorian barely manages to calm the mount down - but on the, uh, brighter side (if it can be called that), his exasperated 'Oh come now, horse! Behave!', and the terrified beast's grunts and whinnies reassure Felix that he is not the only one seeing the stranger by the road. That he is not hallucinating.  
  
And the figure does resemble a hallucination a great deal. A boy in ragged clothing that looks as if it were haphazardly sewn together out of snatches of several mismatched outfits; long-limbed and awkwardly hunched and almost as unhealthily pale as Felix himself, with fraying, brittle, straw-like hair peeking out from beneath the rim of a comically large hat, which flaps at every gust of wind like the ravens would flap their wings.   
  
He looks sadly at the frightened horse with a pair of enormous eyes that might be blue, as far as Felix can tell in the dark (and with the boy's hair getting in the way), but have had almost all colour washed out of them.   
  
'I am sorry I hurt you,' he whispers. 'I didn't mean to. I am still learning how... To be here'.  
  
The horse relaxes, while Dorian hoists himself up in the saddle, one eyebrow quirked to show that the pale stranger has greatly intrigued him. Alistair and Josephine don't seem certain what to make of it all - whereas Felix, as not-a-real-mage, decides to trust Dorian's instincts. If that is an apparition of the Fade, it does not appear hostile... Perhaps it (he?) has come to deliver a cryptic message, as apparitions do?  
  
As if to affirm Felix's guess, the boy speaks again, in the same chanting tone, returning to the subject of 'Hatred'.  
  
'Hatred caught the raven,' he repeats, the rhythm of his chant speeding up to add urgency.  
  
'Caught and crushed, ripped and ruptured, shook and shattered, squashed and scattered. Dying screech drowning in the night, black feathers circling to the ground like black snowflakes. She does not want Haven to be warned. She wants the fires to burn, the defenses to sway, the bodies to fall. She wants as much blood as possible - blood of the Inquisition, because it was not good enough for her; and blood of the Venatori, because she was not good enough for them'.  
  
He tilts his head up, as if listening to the wind whisper something that only he can hear.  
  
'She is Hatred,' he laments softly. 'She was born as she fled from the castle, magic cloaking her in glowing smoke, and offered herself to the men in hoods. Proud like she never was, powerful like she never was, free like she never was. She wanted to walk among them; she wanted to spill more blood for them, like she had done to help the ones in Redcliffe raise the barrier. But they never noticed her, they chased her away, too busy hurrying to their master. "You are of no value, southerner. You could make a half-decent slave, but nothing more". And that was when the demon found her, edging into her skin, making it ripple like water under the patter of the rain. That was when she lost her name, her loathed name, her Circle name - and became Hatred. She is waiting, and hurting, and plotting...'  
  
He pauses with a gasp - and announces in a completely different tone, loudly and hoarsely,  
  
'She is here'.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hatred is Abomination!Linnea (see Meanwhile in Redcliffe for her Venatori fangirling). She will replace Fiona as the boss for In Your Heart Shall Burn - but not before an initial encounter with our messengers!


	4. Illustration of Linnea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I am not actively updating this story any longer, but here is a drawing of Abomination!Linnea that I made.


	5. Chapter 5

The boy's words still hang in the air, like the echo of a blade strike, when the creature steps onto the path. It is so impossibly tall that, for a moment, the most stupid of thoughts intrudes into Felix's mind: he suddenly imagines that one of those thick, gnarly southern fir trees has sprung to life, imbued with a vengeful spirit, and come... lumbering (Maker, what an awkward word choice) after human prey.

 

But no, obviously, it was just his thought process spinning out of control. It is not a tree that has been uprooted and driven forth to destroy all in its path. It is a person. And from the boy's cryptic monologue, he can even guess which one - even though relying on his eyes alone, he would never have recognized her.

 

It's that young woman from Redcliffe. A southern mage that turned on her brethren.

 

Felix remembers her marching into the castle's throne room together with the Venatori, her Circle robe a striking splash of turquoise among the ominous black, looking feverishly ruddy and trembling with the rush of bloodlust, with dark-red specks marring her cheek - the only reminder left of some unfortunate victim - and her pupils widened to bottomless black holes. And he remembers the disappointment and anger in the eyes of Grand Enchanter Fiona and Nadia the helpful mage, as they both backed away from the wild-eyed woman, exhaling with a hoarse undercurrent of pain, as if they had been stabbed, and mouthing her name,

 

'Linnea'.

 

Linnea... Now she will likely not answer to that any more: the boy said that her new name, her new... state of being, is Hatred. Raw, primal emotion, rage at being scorned by the cultists she was so enamoured with, made flesh.

 

Bulky and disproportionate, her now barely human body, haphazardly covered by sadly flapping tatters of that turquoise robe, glimmers eerily in the watered-down shine of the rising moon, which seeps occasionally through the clouds overhead, and in the glow of Haven's distant festive fires. The skin that the light falls on is silvery purple in colour, and textured like the scales of a varghest; the fingers have turned to claws; and the flattened feet, reminiscent of those Orlesian gargoyles have, seem to have large curved spurs at the heel, which dig ferociously into the snow, preparing for a charge.

 

On the... the transformed mage's massive shoulders and on the crown of her head, just as along her bulbous forearms, the scales darken and harden, turning into barbed spikes, each the size of an average soldier's sword, at the very least.

 

Framed by these crusted, roughly chiselled ebony blades, twisted over jutting scales like a piece of threadbare fabric with asymmetrical holes cut clumsily through it where the eyes and mouth should be, the face of Hatred glowers down upon the puny horses and their riders that huddle on a white-powdered slope in front of her, and at the odd boy that keeps watching with his ghostly eyes, thoughtful and a bit melancholy, with his head inclined as if he is expressing both his understanding and his sorrow.

 

For a lapse of time that cannot be measured, even by someone who is supposedly good at making calculations, silence falls over the mountain path, broken only by the growl that ripples in Hatred's scaly chest.

 

She appears to be soaking the sight of them in - perhaps stoking the flame of her own loathing before she decides to attack. The angry purple light in her eyes is certainly blazing brighter and brighter by the second.

 

The members of their little expedition, in turn, have been (hopefully not permanently) petrified by proximity to such a creature. Even Dorian seems to have gotten startled beyond words, scarcely managing a slow, strangled whisper, 'Kaffas... Is that some variety of... pride abomination?'. While his fellow rider, Alistair, has cast his gaze on Josephine, brown eyes enormous with barely constrained anxiety. The good Ambassador has tightened her grip round Felix, unable to break contact with those unblinking slits of purple glare - and he really has no idea whether this will make it better or worse should their horse decide go throw them off... Which it really feels like it's about to do, almost painfully terse under the saddle, its eyes rolled back and its ears flat against its skull.

 

And so it does bolt, eventually - and its wild lurch into the night is what upsets the bizarre sculpture garden the path has turned into, and spins the whirlwind of battle into motion.

 

Well, maybe 'battle' is a bit of a lofty word, with so few of them left capable of holding the abomination at bay.

 

 Felix and Josephine, for one (not that they would have been too helpful in combat) are taken out of action pretty much immediately, thrown off by their horror-struck steed and catapulting towards what Felix, with a nauseating lurch up his gut that has nothing to do with the Blight, thinks to be certain death. But, at the very last moment, they are rescued from the lamentable fate of folding themselves up like a couple of card houses into piles of broken limbs and slipping away into a dark, scorching sea of pain. In mid-fall, the air around them fills with coiling, crisscrossing ribbons of green light, as if someone has tossed forth an ethereal net - and on the other side of the net, a half-blurred figure darts up to them, reaching through to grab their hands and pull them safely to their feet, its motions jerking and chaotic and oddly... fast.

 

'Dorian?' Felix blinks, the ceaseless expansions and contractions of the magical net making him dizzy. 'Have you... sped up time?'

 

'No,' the figure replies. Its voice - Dorian's voice - has also been affected by this speed-altering magic, now sounding as if he had turned into a very impatient chipmunk.

 

'I dismounted and slowed you down before you broke your necks. Your father and I practiced this sort of thing, but... never outside our study'.

 

The net expands for one last time, the green ribbons turning ever broader and paler till they dissolve completely. Still somewhat on the woozy side, Felix gradually figures out (with utmost gratitude) that he and the Ambassador are both on solid ground, upright and firm, and with all their limbs exactly where they should be. Dorian is facing them, slightly doubled over - whereas in the darkened background, Hatred is threshing her scaly arms like a windmill that has spun beyond control, with her clawed fists full of broiling, hissing white flames, and her legs being relentlessly sliced and bitten at by Alistair's blade and the strong wardog jaws of Felix's new friend Cara. Now and again, something hazy-red flashes past Hatred like lightning, taking form for a fraction of a second - the pale boy, now much less harmless, armed with two fang-like daggers - lacerating the glinting scales, and then vanishing again before Hatred can even realize what stung at her.

 

'Hello?' Alistair calls out between strikes, his sweating face snatched out of the nocturnal gloom by the blink of Hatred's burning magic. 'Tev... Dorian? It's amazing that you... I mean... You saved Jos... Uh... It's great what you just did over... Over there... But I could really use the help of a mage!'

 

'Naturally,' Dorian calls back, chipmunk no more.

 

He is clearly intending to present himself in a debonair, confident fashion; but that time spell (which Felix is certain was tremendously complicated) has taken quite a toll on him. Hardly does he make a single step towards Alistair when his knees give way. Pale and no longer capable of bothering with a cheeky smirk, he stumbles helplessly on the spot, groping through the air for support that neither Felix nor Josephine can give him in time. They trot ahead and try to reach for him, the way he reached for them - but he has already sunk into an unsteady kneeling pose in the snow, cursing under his breath. Just as Felix clasps at his forearm, hastily gesturing to Josephine for assistance, Hatred turns around - also a bit unsteady on her feet, with many scales chip off to reveal strips of more vulnerable flesh, but still determined to fight on. To crush and to kill.

 

What little of rational human thought that still remains in this unfortunate mage's spike-pierced skull must have been enough to deduce that Dorian will make easy prey. Before Alistair or Cara can do anything to delay her, Hatred strides away from them, and releases a powerful, whip-like splash of conjured lightning, which burns across Felix and Josephine's kneecaps, setting forth a shudder of paralyzing pain.

 

With Dorian's two companions writhing half-drunkenly on the spot, stupefied by shock magic, all that Hatred has to do is lock her claws around him and yank him out of the snow as if he were a carrot in a vegetable garden, lifting him effortlessly to the level of her warped, livid face and squeezing him harder and harder, as if tightening a pair of gigantic vice, up to the point when he cannot breathe, up to the point when...

 

'Everyone, step away from the abomination! Cassandra, the hook! I will dispatch the creature once we free... whoever that is!'

 

This series of commands comes flying, arrow-swift, from the direction of Haven's protective walls - bellowed in a voice that Felix knows. A voice that has been with him since birth. A voice that he has been so profoundly, excruciatingly terrified of never hearing again.

 

This voice fills his mind, and then his heaving, blissfully full chest, and then all of him, turning into something warm and light, which spills through in an uncontrollable stream of joyous tears. The voice becomes all he can focus on - even as their skirmish with Hatred reaches its culmination.

 

Even as a clanking chain unfurls out of the snowy nothingness, and the hook at its end sinks deep into the exposed patch of soft flesh on the arm of the abomination that is holding Dorian. Even as whoever threw the chain - a warrior of awe-inspiring strength, for certain - pulls and pulls at it, making Hatred reel and screech, until the night is shattered by a horrid crackle of scale and bone, and the poor mage's lower arm comes right off, the claws' vice now free to be pried open by the tip of Alistair's sword, releasing Dorian right into the arms of the unexpectedly materialized ghost boy, shaken but bent on looking debonair again... Despite the fact that he is once more risking becoming filthy, what with the dark, bubbling, boiling-hot demonic blood showering everywhere, melting the snow into a murky greyish river.

 

Even as Alistair, heroically surmounting his shyness, wraps his arms around Felix and Josephine alike and gets them as far out of the abomination's reach as possible, while the agony-stricken Hatred is violently groping her own bleeding stub with her lightning-cloaked good hand, the stinging spell cauterizing the wound. Even as, summoned by magic and engorged by rolling down the snowy slope, a giant sparkling white ball bounces from the same direction as the chain, and hits Hatred in the chest; even as the impact knocks her back, onto the much steeper stretch of the mountainside; even as she rolls off, together with the snowball, trapped in an ever-swelling lump of icy crust, gaining more and more momentum to a breakneck point, until the soft, puffy white carpet down below swallows her whole, without so much as a pop.

 

Even as all of this happens, Felix cannot think of anything but the voice - his father's voice; oh Maker, he can't be dreaming, please, please, please! - and almost fails to register how, with the snow creaking under her heavy boots like it is being murdered, a black-haired woman in armour races into their midst, and asks breathlessly, with a strong Nevarran accent, not even pausing to pick up her discarded, bloodied grappling hook,

 

'Is everyone all right? We were... patrolling the walls and saw... Wait, Josephine?! Why are you here, alone?! Where is Nad... Where are the others?! What of the mages - and who are these strangers with you?!'

 

'The alliance with mages is secured, Cassandra,' the Ambassador (just barely) cuts a word in, sounding a bit slurred after that shock blast, but striving to be the perfect diplomat as always.

 

'Grand Enchanter Fiona will be bringing her people shortly. Mistress Trevelyan, The Iron Bull, and Lady Hawke have stayed behind to help them organize. But I - we - have gone ahead to warn everyone. The Venatori cult is planning an assault on Haven'.

 

'The Elder One is angry,' the pale boy chants, poking his head from behind Josephine's back. 'You took his Templars - and his mages. He wants the Herald - he wants to grab and to gnaw and to grind him into dust. Like Hatred did. His hands are hungry for the Herald's Mark - a piece of the Fade that should have been his, taken from him once, and then twice, though he does not know... But they will rip into other flesh too, if they need to. He will kill as many people as it takes to get to the Herald. He is... very angry'.

 

'And here I thought I was done with putting innocent lives in danger,' the voice jests mirthlessly, as its owner joins the woman named Cassandra.

 

Father. It really is him. Dressed in some sort of long travelling overcoat, greyish-green in colour instead of his favourite red; with a bundle of mismatched scarves turning his chest and throat into an oversized cocoon. Unshaven, perhaps because travelling endlessly across southern Thedas in search of rifts to close leaves little time for grooming; a bit thinner than he was back home, and more sunburnt than Felix ever remembers him (that snow probably reflects the sunlight like a mirror during the daytime). But those are such trifles... He is still him, him, him!

 

Just before coming up to Cassandra, he begins to say something else - but when his eyes meet Felix's, he freezes up with his mouth still open; then shuts it very, very slowly, while breathing in with the smallest of sobbing noises, and presses his rigid fingers to his lips, obscuring almost all of his face save for his eyes, which are swimming in the same clear, shimmering tears that are still veiling Felix's own gaze.

 

'Herald?' Cassandra straightens her back and squares her shoulders. 'Are you all right?'

 

'This young man is Felix,' Josephine explains, while softly motioning to her to make way. 'The Herald's son. He and his friend travelled all the way from Tevinter when they found him missing. That was why all our attempts to locate him failed: he was already en route south...'

 

Her voice melts into the background, melodious but incoherent; and, deafened and blinded to everything except the sound of his father's ragged breaths and the sight of his thunderstruck face, Felix staggers forward, mechanically lifting up his arms, opening himself for an embrace. Which has been such a long, long time coming. And which, no matter how long they both draw it out, clinging on to one another like they might fall off the mountain if they let go, will never be enough for either of them. Never enough to express how much each has missed the other, fearing and hoping and longing.

 

Somewhere along the way, Dorian joins in; Felix thinks he has drawn him close, maybe with the pale boy giving a little encouraging push... Or it could have been his father; it is rather hard to tell, with all the tears, and heart-deep gasps, and hoarse outcries that kind of mesh together, with only separate words emerging to the surface from the midst of the sighing, tremulous, jumbled whole.

 

'You are alive... Maker, you are alive... I was afraid I'd never reach you before... they did...'

 

'Felix... Oh, Felix... I can breathe easily now... Every day apart from you... Has been a nightmare...'

 

'It's all right; it's all right... I have been healing myself... Maevaris has been helping, and Dorian...'

 

'Dorian... I am... I am so sorry... The things I said to you when we parted... And then... I raised my hand against you... I never should have...'

 

'Well then... Ahem... Heartwarming as it all is... We can discuss the assault on my heavenly visage later... There is a siege coming up, after all. Now, now, I do mean it! You two are manhandling me so roughly that I seem to have gotten something in my eye'.

 

And with that, they finally have to break away - and Dorian instantly begins to smooth out his robes, with an exaggeratedly busy air.

 

He is right, of course ('Naturally', he would say). The confrontation with Hatred - who, regrettable as her fate is, is probably better off buried under all that snow - was only the beginning. The Elder One (whoever that is) and his cult will soon descend upon them. Trying to murder the Herald... Father.

 

Well then, they will have a lot of resistance to break through. Felix is half Alexius, half Arida, and neither of his halves has ever taken kindly to having loved ones threatened.

 


	6. Illustration of Cassandra and Alexius

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Cassandra said that just they got alerted to the presence of an abomination in the snow, she and the Herald had been patrolling the walls of Haven, in reality, they had been gazing up at the sky, talking, and almost held hands at one point.


End file.
